Luca! Fabian – oh my God – not with Vasily’s group.

Gone and distant more quickly than they’d approached; heading for the Col de Port, not particularly high but a 1-in-20 climb lasting 12 kilometres. Onwards to the Plateau de Boudin, the final climb and altitude finish; hors catégorie, viciously steep at the outset and almost 1,800 metres high. Best known as a cross-country ski station. Claim it by bike? Racing? After 154 kilometres in which there were four other mountains and two hot-spot sprints? Why? A touch of insanity? Or the pursuit of glory? What?

I’m going to have to confront her.

Ben York assessed the gash on Hunter’s elbow and decided three stitches would suffice.

But if I do, and she backs off, then I risk losing her altogether.

‘Cutting off my nose to spite my face, I suppose,’ Ben said out loud.

Why on earth do I even give a damn?

Hunter felt his nose. ‘Huh?’

‘Nothing,’ said Ben, ‘I was talking to myself. First sign of madness and all that.’

‘Well, can you kinda like fix my arm before you flip out?’ Hunter said, quite serious.

Ben smiled and drew thread through a needle.

If wanking can make you go blind, a lack of sex can make you go crazy.

‘Tell me about Tayla,’ Ben murmured whilst setting to work on Hunter’s elbow.

‘She’s my girl,’ Hunter sighed, suddenly missing his fiancée terribly, more so when he realized he hadn’t given her a second thought let alone a first one over the past two days.

‘How did you two meet?’ Ben probed.

Hunter, presuming Ben was trying to distract him from the unpleasant sting of the stitching, reminisced gladly. ‘I stole her from Richie Budd, just after the Motorola team disbanded, the season before I turned pro.’

‘Did she come willingly?’ Ben persisted, giving his head a quick shake to dislodge the sound of Cat coming willingly.

‘Sure did,’ Hunter nodded, ‘in fact, she made a play for me. But we’d known each other for a while, living in the same town and all.’

Ben swabbed the wound, dressed it, and sent Hunter on his way. ‘Well ridden,’ Ben said, wondering who had truly initiated whatever it was that was going on between him and Cat.

Is it simply control that I crave and feel I’ve lost?

‘I can smell the top ten!’ Hunter sang, loping out of Ben’s room.

Or, great sex aside, is it Cat herself that I crave and all the more so because she’s not mine?

Luca came in.

‘Yo, Doc!’

‘What’s up?’ Ben asked.

‘I’ve got the squits.’

Ben gave Luca a pill.

‘The Babe was asking for you,’ Luca said.

‘Who?’

‘McCabe!’ Luca elaborated. ‘The Babe. You know – the Babe McCabe. She hates when I call her that. She’s so cute.’

Ben glanced at his watch. It was eight thirty.

I wish I’d never met her.

I want her right now.

This is no good.

This could be brilliant.